Soft Computing Techniques Applied to Distribution Network Reconfiguration: A Survey of the State-of-the-Art

Network reconfiguration is the process of altering the topological structure of distribution feeders to achieve more reliable and economic operation of distribution network. Distribution Network Reconfiguration (DNR) is a multiobjective, combinatorial, non-differentiable constrained optimization problem. This strategy nowadays is very frequently used by distribution engineers to meet various objectives like loss minimization and power quality enhancement. This paper describes the various possible objectives and constraints of radial network reconfiguration. This paper also presents a comprehensive review of various strategies of network reconfiguration which are mainly based on heuristic methods and intelligent optimization algorithm.